Error by Trial

Bizarrely, [Vincent Bugliosi] spends two pages of the first chapter telling us that he was the only person who immediately noticed that, in the U.S. Open tennis final of 1983, Ivan Lendl simply "gave up" against Jimmy Conners. A month later, Bugliosi was vindicated when two "tennis greats" said that they, too, were "disgusted by Lendl's performance." If, like me, you find yourself bamboozled as to why a 25-yearold tennis match should be discussed in detail on pages seven and eight of a book about the "hell on earth that is Iraq," Bugliosi quickly explains: his perspicacious judgment of Lendl's performance shows "this tendency of mine to see what is in front of me in its pristine condition." Others are "blindingly patriotic," which is "not a mindset that is conducive to critical thinking."Why, for example, focus on [George H. W Bush] alone? Yes, Bush spearheaded the invasion, but he could not have done it without the enthusiastic backing of his advisers and of Congress, too. In the Senate and the House of Representatives, 263 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted "aye" to Bush's Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq resolution. Should the vast majority of Congress be tried for murder, too, or at least for aiding and abetting a rampaging killer? No, says Bugliosi, on the insanely flimsy basis that they were duped by Bush's lies: "The consent that Congress gave Bush is nullified by the deliberate misrepresentations he made to Congress in inducing it to give him its consent." Here, continuing with the legal theme, Congress is treated as a child or a mentally disturbed entity, non compos mentis therefore not responsible. This is the most craven apology I have come across for Congress's shameful record on Iraq. In 2002, there was plenty of evidence that the case against [Saddam Hussein] had been exaggerated. Yet Bugliosi excludes congressmen for their poor judgment by depicting them as victims of Bush's allegedly awesome powers of persuasion.Even more ominous